Press Release CaixaForum Barcelona From 18 October 2018 to 2 January 2019 Press Release The exhibition, unprecedented in our country, presents 345 works, including paintings, drawings, etchings, sculptures, newspapers, posters, photographs and objects from the period In 1880, Montmartre was a poor, marginal place that did not even form part of Paris. However, in a relatively short span of time, the area was transformed into the literary and artistic centre of the French capital. ”la Caixa” Foundation presents Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spirit of Montmartre , an unprecedented exhibition in our country that explores the main features of radical French art in the late-nineteenth century. The “spirit” referred to in the title was a feeling, an avant-garde mentality that infused the work of many artists of the time. Outstanding among these was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who played a key role, introducing extraordinary aesthetic advances. Through 345 works loaned by collections from around the world, the show examines the rich exchanges that took place among a score of like-minded artists during Toulouse- Lautrec’s short lifetime and a brief period thereafter. The exhibition also illustrates the vital role that ephemeral artistic productions – etchings, posters, illustrations for books and the press, designs for music scores and so on – played in the careers of Toulouse-Lautrec and his contemporaries: all this provided them with the means of reaching wider audiences and earning a living outside the restrictive academic system. Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spirit of Montmartre. Concept and production : ”la Caixa” Foundation. Curator : Phillip Dennis Cate, art critic and independent curator. Dates : From 18 October 2018 to 2 January 2019. Place : CaixaForum Barcelona (Av. de Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 6-8). @FundlaCaixa @CaixaForum #ToulouseLautrecCxF 2 Press Release Barcelona, 17 October 2018. Today, Elisa Durán, Deputy General Director of ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation, Valentí Farràs, Director of CaixaForum Barcelona, and Phillip Dennis Cate, art critic and independent curator, will officially open the exhibition Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spirit of Montmartre . Within its cultural programmes, ”la Caixa” Foundation focuses particularly on the art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the mission of promoting knowledge and appreciation of a key period in the formation of contemporary sensibilities. Now, presenting the exhibition Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spirit of Montmartre , the Foundation continues to pursue the goal of enabling wider audiences to discover the artistic effervescence of the late-nineteenth century, key to understanding events in later decades. Along similar lines, we should also remember the shows devoted to such artists as Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Maurice de Vlaminck, Camille Pissarro and Joaquín Sorolla, the collective exhibitions Impressionist and Modern. Masterpieces from the Phillips Collection and French Masters from the Clark Collection, and earlier transversal projects such as Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929. When Art Danced with Music. The exhibition that now opens at CaixaForum Barcelona examines a unique period in the last one hundred and fifty years of European art history. In the explosive emergence of the Parisian neighbourhood of Montmartre as a radical, “modern” literary and artistic centre, we can see the conquest of freedom over convention, Jules Grün, Songs in Montmartre , 1900. the triumph of creativity and the artistic © Private collection calling over the certainties of bourgeois life, the beauty of the moment vanquishing the timeless but lifeless values of the academies. Produced by ”la Caixa” Foundation, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spirit of Montmartre is a show without precedent in our country. The exhibition presents an extraordinary selection of 345 works including paintings, drawings, etchings, sculptures, newspapers, posters, photographs and objects from the period, such as an original travelling shadow theatre. All this was made possible thanks 3 Press Release to the cooperation of dozens of museums and international collectors, as well as the work of the curator, Phillip Dennis Cate. As Cate explains in the catalogue produced to accompany the show, he has been researching into the art of Toulouse-Lautrec and his circle since the 1970s. The result is an in-depth study of what Cate calls “the spirit of Montmartre"; a feeling, an avant-garde mentality. The show examines essential aspects of French radical late-nineteenth century art and reveals the great aesthetic achievements of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a key figure who created some of the best-known lithographs and drawings associated with the Montmartre scene. The show features no fewer than 61 works by Toulouse- Lautrec, including six oils and a drawing. The exhibition enables us to see Toulouse- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Le Coiffeur – Lautrec’s work and that of his fellow anti- Programme du Théâtre libre , 1893. © Private Collection / Photograph: Elsevier establishment conspirators in context, revealing Stokmans Fotografie the fruitful exchanges between like-minded artists during Toulouse-Lautrec’s short lifetime and a brief period after his death. The exhibition features pieces by more than twenty artists. Among others, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Manet, Louis Anquetin, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Bottini, Pablo Picasso, Maxime Dethomas, Hermann-Paul, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Charles Léandre, Louis Legrand, Charles Maurin, Henri Rivière, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, Louis Valtat and Adolphe Willette. The show also delves into the important role played by ephemeral artistic works in the trajectories of Toulouse-Lautrec and his colleagues. These productions, which include prints, poster art, book and magazine illustration, music score design and other works on paper, were the means by which these artists reached larger audiences, as well as enabling them to earn a living outside the restrictive academic system. Montmartre: radical, anti-establishment and anti-bourgeois In 1880, Montmartre, located in the outskirts to the north of Paris, was a place of poverty and marginalisation. Soon, however, the neighbourhood would begin 4 Press Release to attract young avant-garde artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Signac, Pierre Bonnard and Henri-Gabriel Ibels; performers like Aristide Bruant and Yvette Guilbert; writers like Émile Goudeau, Alphonse Allais and Alfred Jarry; and musicians and composers like Erik Satie, Vincent Hyspa and Gustave Charpentier. In late-1881, the frustrated artist Rodolphe Salis founded a cabaret, Le Chat Noir, in Montmartre. Le Chat Noir and its regulars, especially the artists and writers known as Les Arts Incohérents (“Incoherents”), a kind of proto-Dadaist or proto-Surrealist group, were the main driving force that made Montmartre such an important focus for avant-garde artistic and literary life in the Paris of the early-1880s. Indeed, in a relatively short period of time, Montmartre became the literary and artistic centre of Paris. By the end of the century, there were more than forty entertainment establishments in the neighbourhood: cabarets, concert cafés, dance halls, music halls, theatres, circuses and so on. In time, this cultural and ludic environment ended up by being commercialised by its very creators, to the extent that, ironically, “bohemia” became an important international tourist attraction. Montmartre was radical, anti-establishment and anti-bourgeois by definition. Rejecting more traditional venues, artists, performers, poets and writers presented their works at cabarets, concert cafés, circuses and experimental theatres, in the street (in posters and processions), and in popular books and magazines. Montmartre's artistic community innovatively adopted certain anti-academic practices, such as humour, visual calembours (puns, plays on words), irony, satire, parody, caricature and puppets. All this, to critique the society of their time and the human condition in general. A favourite theme of these artists was modern life in Montmartre itself: streets, cabarets, dance halls, performers, artists, prostitutes, vagabonds and so on. The members of the artistic community of Montmartre proclaimed their independence, their social and political engagement and their artistic preferences by manipulating artistic techniques in such media as painting, sculpture, printing, music, the theatre and even film. Structured into nine sections, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spirit of Montmartre examines the outstanding contributions that all these artists made to fin-de- 5 Press Release siècle art. The exhibition begins by presenting the landscapes of Montmartre, and continues with a section devoted to the Le Chat Noir cabaret, focusing particularly on shadow theatre and the “Incoherents” group, which paved the way for the Dada movement. Subsequent sections are devoted to the press, posters and the relations between art and serial production techniques and the mass media and, finally, nightlife, shows, the circus and the image of women. As is usual, the exhibition is complemented by a publication, edited by ”la Caixa” Foundation. This catalogue includes articles by the curator Phillip Dennis Cate and the experts Saskia Ooms, Michela Niccolai, Laurent Bihl, and Ricard Bru, who examines the links between Montmartre and Catalan artists. Parallel to the show, a programme of activities for all audiences will also include a lecture by the curator and the lecture cycle Montmartre: Landscape